A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
Rihaku
The Internet
Gisena is way sexier than Marvin! And much less of a downer too.
So just the one then?
The plan is for your King's Scepter Remittance to just be a partial restoration of the hero's power, yes. Unless there is overwhelming demand otherwise, but it may require retconning part of this update.
It's certainly possible! You may be able to tell with more granularity when you get closer...
[X] Humanitarian Efforts
[X] Luna Conquerer
[X] Luna Conquerer
That's your read of her? Okay. I looked at her as more the embodiment of how the quest wasn't going the way the readers wanted it to. We were hoping our enemy was some still-developing hopeful from the kingdom, she's the one who tells us it's actually an orc god-king. We had decided to make Jeanne our temporary waifu, Gisena had a contrasting personality and once we resurrected her we were stuck with her. We wanted to out-escalate the enemy force up front, and she thought that was impossible - and behaved accordingly.
The best complaint I remember about her was that she was literally a traitor who had killed other sorceresses as part of her plan (the details of which I can't recall right now). But we were best buddies with Jeanne because of her justifiable arrogance, so I found it flimsy in context. I hate it when NPCs and villains are held to different standards than the heroes.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Quite possibly, yes.
[X] Humanitarian Efforts
[X] King of Sorcerers
If this does look like a sci fi verse, which it may be, personally I'm kind of looking forward to telling people we're a wizard, and our good friend here is a sorceress. Sadly, the descriptions of our new target realm aren't really giving enough info, and it is probably not that likely that we're a completely unprecedented phenomenon like that.
But there is also the aspect that our goal is to gain and maintain political power. Much of the challenge will not be biggatons, most likely. High utility seems like a good plan for accomplishing that.
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Rihaku
The Internet
An interesting perspective! But Gisena did develop a highly sophisticated toilet and indoor plumbing system for Seram, so there's no way she embodied how the quest wasn't going the way the readers wanted it to! What could be more important than a proper thinking man's toilet?
It could be a tragedy if the detritus of their battle causes more damage than you could possibly counter by evacuating people!
Biggatons do convert to political power... eventually. Power flows from the tip of a sword, after all! But there are often difficulties in the exact details of that process. Especially if one is a rigid and inflexible tyrant!
There is more to be dreamt of in this realm than one man and his companions!
DkArthas
CAPITAL IS TO BLAME
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- They
Honestly, I am more tempted by Twice-Great than King of Sorcerors. Twice-Great would make for an interesting dynamic and there is an interesting story to tell in that combination. Maybe Catherine can be the surrogate daughteru for the MC? And together they fight crimes?
And these monsters seem to be hive minds of sort looking at the coordination or at least pieces of the same mind separated from the main body. At least that's my reading. In which case, it might just be better to go after the main monster.
And these monsters seem to be hive minds of sort looking at the coordination or at least pieces of the same mind separated from the main body. At least that's my reading. In which case, it might just be better to go after the main monster.
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- Location
- Pindorama
Let me expound on why I think Twice-great is the more complete option:
Seals let us use a vast array of practical effects and support abilities while still allowing access to conceptual powers through the Realm of Forms. It is by far the most versatile of the two, and much more likely to be relevant in other ways besides combat power since our task is not only conquest, but rulership; while Accretion can make us a ruler of legend, it can hardly be counted to give practical answers to the problems of governing things, especially when you account for the time to build such a legend.
Catherine is explicitly noted to be a beast late-game, becomes immediately relevant with Seals, gets an unique Soul Evocation, and most importantly, has built in plot-hooks into the setting. As the last heir of an ancient lost lineage, she can be an impressive political banner for our efforts, even if her own persuasion is lacking. Plus, she is implied to meet a tragic fate if we don't chose her here, so there's that.
Hunger makes us improve faster obviously, which is not only great for us but for Catherine too as our progression directly buffs her. It is also said to have a beneficial effect on the protagonist's mentality, which is always helpful if we are going through the long-slog of conquering the Human Sphere.
Forbear's upgrades our main powerset directly, giving us more power and therefore more safety. It gives us Curse mitigation, which is extremely relevant for the Apocyphal and Decimator Curses in particular; It has great synergy with Hunger as that allows us to get to the Point of Imprisoning Curses faster. Finally, it gives Catherines a spiffy new powerset.
The whole plan is highly synergistic and gives us a character dynamic we never had before in a Rihaku quest; an old veteran hero embittered by war serving as a mentor to a timid young student, guiding her into realizing her potential. Once her whole "last survivor of an ancient dynasty" thing goes into full motion, I suspect things will get quite interesting.
Seals let us use a vast array of practical effects and support abilities while still allowing access to conceptual powers through the Realm of Forms. It is by far the most versatile of the two, and much more likely to be relevant in other ways besides combat power since our task is not only conquest, but rulership; while Accretion can make us a ruler of legend, it can hardly be counted to give practical answers to the problems of governing things, especially when you account for the time to build such a legend.
Catherine is explicitly noted to be a beast late-game, becomes immediately relevant with Seals, gets an unique Soul Evocation, and most importantly, has built in plot-hooks into the setting. As the last heir of an ancient lost lineage, she can be an impressive political banner for our efforts, even if her own persuasion is lacking. Plus, she is implied to meet a tragic fate if we don't chose her here, so there's that.
Hunger makes us improve faster obviously, which is not only great for us but for Catherine too as our progression directly buffs her. It is also said to have a beneficial effect on the protagonist's mentality, which is always helpful if we are going through the long-slog of conquering the Human Sphere.
Forbear's upgrades our main powerset directly, giving us more power and therefore more safety. It gives us Curse mitigation, which is extremely relevant for the Apocyphal and Decimator Curses in particular; It has great synergy with Hunger as that allows us to get to the Point of Imprisoning Curses faster. Finally, it gives Catherines a spiffy new powerset.
The whole plan is highly synergistic and gives us a character dynamic we never had before in a Rihaku quest; an old veteran hero embittered by war serving as a mentor to a timid young student, guiding her into realizing her potential. Once her whole "last survivor of an ancient dynasty" thing goes into full motion, I suspect things will get quite interesting.
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A Human Sphere implies the existence of other Spheres. We may want to spend as much time in others as possible, to mitigate Decimations and the malus of our personality. Preliminary theory is that the pack of beasts (reminiscent of an early Terrascape encounter) evanesced into nothing on death because they're from one and have no ontological inertia outside of their home turf. Humanity may have gone full Evangelion and constructed their own biomechanical horrors from the corpses of slain monsters. But if that's the case, how do they dodge the dissipation? It's all very Pacific Rim, in a good way, but this could be completely off-base.
Rihaku
The Internet
Now that we're closing in on the last part of character creation, I'm curious - what would you choose if the Accursed had given this opportunity to you? Would you go for the path of Progression and take on the Apocryphal Curse, or the safer and easier route of the Combat-type? Which Remittances, Primary and Lesser, would you pick? Would anyone refuse the offer completely?
Hm... the MC is 29, almost 30, and Catherine is, while young... not young enough to really be the MC's daughter surrogate! She's about 18-19 years old. But yes, fighting crime / armies together is certainly on the table.
It's very much the case that the hive mind is mostly unconcerned with the loss of individual bodies, but the individual bodies are causing most of the mayhem and slaughter in the city below, so there's still value in killing them... as long as the wurm beast doesn't, say, disgorge more.
Hm... the MC is 29, almost 30, and Catherine is, while young... not young enough to really be the MC's daughter surrogate! She's about 18-19 years old. But yes, fighting crime / armies together is certainly on the table.
It's very much the case that the hive mind is mostly unconcerned with the loss of individual bodies, but the individual bodies are causing most of the mayhem and slaughter in the city below, so there's still value in killing them... as long as the wurm beast doesn't, say, disgorge more.
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- Location
- USA
This line for Luna Conqueror worries me a bit. Straightforward challenges shouldn't be a problem for most builds anyway (Maybe the King of Sorcs) so to be only strong at them hints that the build is weaker for challenges that go a different path.
Killing wurm beast should give us a fortune in advancement due to Hunger, which most builds include. Lunar should have the best use out of it, as combination of Accretion and Hunger would benefit a lot from slaying a Kaiju, and we don't care about Charisma as much due to Gisene.
I have to reiterate the value of Gisene in regard with current scenario - remember; [we drain life from the world around us], [we need to rule majority of Human Sphere] and [there are presumably more Sphere's than Human one]. Together, the most efficient strategy is to spend our time out of Human Sphere grinding Hunger, so our kingdom doesn't suffer drain, while Gisena is managing things back at home.
I have to reiterate the value of Gisene in regard with current scenario - remember; [we drain life from the world around us], [we need to rule majority of Human Sphere] and [there are presumably more Sphere's than Human one]. Together, the most efficient strategy is to spend our time out of Human Sphere grinding Hunger, so our kingdom doesn't suffer drain, while Gisena is managing things back at home.
It's conventionally the strongest but lacks utility otherwise. That means it's the best against your average challenge, but other choices may be better suited for tackling on specific ones.
[X] Humanitarian Efforts
[X] King of Sorcerers
[X] King of Sorcerers
- Location
- Pindorama
Also, I forgot to mention, but if we find a cool giant robot, Seals can be used to pimp it out immediately and we could just focus our Sealing efforts on that; while Accretion may have an awkward period until we build a legend with the mech where we are like, super strong outside it but possibly not stronger than the robot itself, making it kind of redundant. Seal can also be applied to ally mechs too, while Accretion is just us.
Surreptitiously advertising for the Accursed now are we? Now I know what to look for if half the questers suddenly disappear.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
we might be able to focus our Apocryphal curse mitigation on that?
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
That's a tough one. I don't think I could handle the Apocryphal Curse - I value downtime too much, and burnout is a very real and present threat in my psyche. The Apocryphal Curse would inevitably push me past my limits and I think I'd just die if that was the case. Maybe I have hidden reserves of incredible willpower, but I doubt it. If it was the only way to get magical powers, I'd go for it, but with the less onerous Combat-type available I'd just take that.
As for exact build, probably something like Affliction of Slumber, Brand of the Champion and Regalia. Slumber is IMO the best curse to live with and Brand is not super bad when mitigated. Decimator's is also a decent choice as long as you can mitigate it fast enough, but I refuse to let a single innocent person die for my power so I can't take Decimator, there's always some risk that I won't get mitigation up in time. Three Wishes and Regalia are my favorite remittances, but Three Wishes has anti-synergy with Brand of the Champion so eh.
I don't think the lesser remittances offered in this quest fit a combat type or me personally, so LRs are hard to answer. Especially since I have free ones!
Once empowered I'd set out in search of curse mitigation immediately. The only real downside to this offer for me is my family getting hit with the Brand of the Champion, which would make home life difficult. Hopefully I can find a work-around in short order. Honestly, my life's ambition has always been to get some kind of magical power, just having that fulfills life goals and I can go full comfy quest afterwards, with some interludes of interdimensional adventuring when I have the energy for it. I also have Regalia's reset in reserve in case anything dangerous shows up.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'd take
Freedom
Slumber
Lunacy
Regalia
use Wild on Force
take Hunger+Gisena and give her the ring (though I assume Freedom+Regalia would offer some different choices I might like more, and also the companions compatible with me would be different from those compatible with the hero)
i don't wanna fight people
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